Dimensions
by Bodacious Overlord Zextillion
Summary: Glave got bored and decided to play a prank on the gods themselves, but accidentally caused a rip in the very fabric of the universe itself. (Previously named Perspective) (R&R k) (Currently on hold while I rewrite a few parts of the story and come up with good ideas to make the story more readable.)
1. Prologue

"You have got thirty seconds to live. I suggest you make the best decisions in that time frame."

* * *

**Today's command: Fight on!**

Space. Space is all around the universe. Where there is matter, there is space somewhere nearby. Where there is space, there is also dark matter. This matter pushes all things out, but some other anomalies have come from this.

The El stone for instance. The El is a giant crystal radiating energy for life to exist. Without it, all life would cease and the planets would become desolate. This dark matter gave us this, but it's always seeking to take it back.

The demons were born from the Dark El, a version of the El meant to counteract its sole existence. Since the beginning of time, the El life forms and the Dark El life forms have been at constant war with each other.

The cosmos will look down on all of us, but that won't stop the El Search Party. A red haired man clad in a cloak with a trim of fire and a logo of an infinite amount of swords in the middle casually walked onto the deck of the ship. An explosion rocked the side of the ship, but he pushed on.

"Damage report?"

The nasod unit monitoring the ship's vitals answered aloud, "Secondary engines overheating, and the ship's hull is pretty damaged."

"Anything else?"

"No. The main engine is still working fine and the cannons are sturdy as ever."

A man clad in heavy blue stood on the other side of the bridge. He said, "Good. I always knew my Destroyers could never be destroyed themselves."

The red haired man said to the other, "So all the lights in space are our enemies now?"

The blue man said, "It sure looks like it. I'm sure Freitunier can handle them all now!"

The red hair smirked. "Hah! Like all those lights are even worthy to be called our enemies. We've faced worse than death itself, and these punks think they can break us?"

The nasod unit reported to the red hair, "Cannons loaded. On your orders, captain."

"Excellent." He waited for a while, then shouted back, "All units, fire at will!"

The blue man on the other side donned a mask and wings and jumped off the bridge onto the ship hull. He went to the nearest cannon and yanked it off. He started spinning with the cannon, and using the momentum that he gained, pushed himself off the ship with the cannon and fired it at anything that moved.

A man who had the striking semblance of a crow ready to dine walked onto the bridge. He shouted, "All men, battle stations! They can't escape us now!"

The cannons were now firing as fast as they could. The nasod unit was in her battle station, firing off concentrated beams of light from her fingertips. The red haired man joined her and asked her, "Pretty isn't it?"

The nasod unit nodded. Right now, she did not need much of a distraction. "Why yes. Lighting up the dark is what you planned to do from the beginning, if I recall correctly?"

He replied, "Yup. I've always been afraid of the dark, and only you know that. But do you know how I face my fears?"

"You slash it in the face. Just like all your other problems and fears that you have."

The man walked out of the battle station and summoned his sword into his hand. He walked up to a microphone and projected into it, "El Search Party, fight on! They can't stop us now! We'll show heaven and hell themselves the power of our will!"

The front of the ship glowed and giant blades emerged on the side. "I'll slash all the stars in the heaven out of existence of time and space itself! When we're through with them, not even Henir will be able to bring them back!"

The nasod unit stopped firing lasers and smiled. She joined the red hair man at the microphone and leaned in to shout:

**"TODAYS COMMAND: FIGHT ON!**

"WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK WE ARE?"

The red haired man smirked, and I looked at him. He was probably noticing the differences in how I acted since he first met me. No matter. I am no longer the same queen as before. I am the goddess of light now; I will bring pain down upon our enemies! If there's a problem that needs to be solved, punch it in the face!


	2. Rena

"Elsword never falls down. He merely befriends the ground."

* * *

My name is Elsword. Ever since I was a little boy, I've been aspiring to become a strong warrior like my sister. I loved my sister because she was the only family I knew. From a young age, she's been training me to be the strongest I can, and it finally paid off when I became the youngest member of the El Explorers. I'm not a knight yet, as I've never had the opportunity to get to one of the major cities in Elrios, like Elder, despite its relative closeness to my village. Due to training, I simply didn't have enough time to go there. Besides, being 13, I feel like I'm still too young to become a knight. Don't get me wrong though, I am fully capable of becoming one.

What am I doing now? To be honest, I have no idea. Our village's El has been stolen a couple of minutes ago. 'My' party tried to stop bandits from getting to it, but we obviously failed. They're surprisingly agile and managed to slip out of our grasp. Without the El, life would cease to exist, and those bandits... Ugh... We thought they were perfectly good men and welcomed then into our village, and then...

**Today's lesson: Never trust grown ups.**

Anyway, our chief has discovered that the nearby forest ruins is being under attack by woodland creatures called phorus. I would much rather chase after those bandits, but Lowe, my new instructor, is apparently on the case. So now we're here, traveling to these ruins to protect it. I personally don't see the importance of preserving this place, since nothing lives in it, but I won't dare say that out loud in front of Rena. She's normally a cheerful elf, but I have a bad vibe that there may be something evil underneath that happy exterior. No I don't mean evil evil, but I don't want to be around her if she gets ticked.

Oh, I guess I should introduce you to each of us. I'm Elsword, you knew that. Aisha is this purple-headed magician. She used to be one of the most powerful mages in the world when she was what, six? I forgot, but she had all her powers taken away so she has to start from square one. Rena is an elf who has to find the stolen El so her race doesn't dissapear. Raven is an odd man. He used to be a soldier in the Velder army, but the nobles didn't like him. He had his arm severed and was forced to get a Nasod replacement arm that drives him crazy. Literally. Oh yeah, Nasod is a word used to describe these weird mechanical organisms that we used to live in peace with, but I'm pretty sure they're all dead now. Speaking of Nasods, Eve is the queen of them. I know I said they were all dead, but, uh, nevermind. Last but not least, there's Chung. Don't mention that he looks like a girl and you should be fine. (He really does though.)

Where was I going with this? Oh right, the forest ruins. When we got there, what do you know, we found phorus sacking the darn place. Some of them looked really hungry too, and I felt really bad about them. However, some of them didn't look so hungry, and they looked like they were having a blast looting whatever they could.

Rena was understandably upset about all of this, whatever the reason each phoru had for being there. She knocked an arrow into her bow and shot it. It missed and sailed straight over one phoru's head, but I'm pretty sure that was intentional. All eyes are on her now. She shouted at them, "Hey, just what do you think you're doing to the previous home of the elves! I demand that you return all the belongings that you have stolen back to their rightful places!"

The phorus all looked at each other and laughed. One of them, what appeared to be a youngling with a bulky blue bag on his back, just stood up and shouted back at her, "And why would you think that we're stealing from the ruins? We're just looking."

Rena twitched. "Looking for what?"

"Why, for the uh, _misplaced_ El of course!" That is just stupid on so many levels. "The El has been _misplaced_ and all the guardians of this place are just going insane! We offered to help look for it, and they gladly agreed!" the phoru said with a smirk.

Rena, "And may I ask where the guardians are?"

I heard rustling sounds behind us and unsheathed my sword. Raven noticed too and was getting ready to unsheath his sword too. Wait, did I mention that Raven uses a sword? I think I did. Uh. Um, then out jumped out a couple of what appeared to be cut logs with funky leaf hats and little stubs for arms and legs. "We're right here of course! These phorus have agreed to help us search the entire area for the El. We've lost it, and we can't even feel the El, so we're having these native animals help."

Next to me, I heard Aisha mentally squee. "Oh wow! You guys look so adorable!" Quickly, her expression turned to one of confusion though. "One thing I don't get, if you can't feel the El, what makes you think the El is in here?"

Those knights looked stumped. "Uh. We didn't think about that."

A phoru landed right in front of them with a fairly audible thud. We heard screaming from behind us, and we saw a giant grass monster. It had a white face with two eyes, but those eyes looked _empty_, like it had no idea what was going on. The rest of it appeared to be covered in leaves and grass, but it looked BIG (and when I say big, I mean relatively big. They're definitely bigger than the knights and phorus, but it's about the same height as us. It's rather, um, wide-waisted too). It roared and said in a commanding voice, "These phorus are trouble. Two of those _animals_ tried to eat my grand coat of leaves! I noticed that a couple of them weren't even looking for the El. They were putting ancient relics into bags like robbers! They cannot be trusted!" The guardian pulled back his arm to punch a phoru and all of them dispersed like little babies I guess?

The knights took out shields and a giant vine (like that would do any real damage, but it would probably sting. A lot.) and charged at the phorus. We heard many pleas along the lines of: "No, we're sorry! We'll give all the relics back!" and "I was just looking for food!" along other words.

Eve looked on with that stoic expression of hers and said, "Well that escalated quickly, now didn't it? These creatures are so unintelligent."

Chung gazed on and said, "So much I didn't see. Man, I never got entertained back in Hamel!" I couldn't help but chuckle at his expression of pure joy at these phorus getting dominated by the guardians. He mumbled to himself more quietly, "Hamel. I feel like I should be there, but at the same time I don't. What's this..." He was probably just homesick or something.

The phoru that stood up to Rena earlier was running straight towards us. Raven tripped him and pinned him down against the ground. Eve asked the phoru coldly, "I see you are in a lot of trouble. Let me ask, do you have a leader responsible for this? Don't lie, I can detect when a being is lying, and I don't deal kindly with beings that lie." Her two drone pet things Moby and Remy transformed into menacing spears and went straight towards him, stopping just a few inches from his face.

He gulped and quickly replied, "His name's William! William's the one who had this idea to go loot this place! I was a bit skeptical about it, but I only went along with it for the food, I swear! I just got a bit carried away, that's all! Please let me go!"

Raven replied coldly, "I hope you learned your lesson scum. See what happens when you steal?" He lifted his arm off the phoru, and he started running as fast as he could away from us.

Aisha looked after him and said to herself, "William..." She looked at our group and said, "Well Rena, at least we have a lead!" She looked around a bit and said, "Guys, where's Rena?"

That's when we all noticed Rena was in fact, missing. Where she ran off to, I would assume to get more leads on William. "Come on guys, let's go find her." I looked at the entrance to the ruins and heard rather loud screaming inside. "And let's avoid the ruins. I'd rather not go in there." The others all agreed that would be a bad choice.

We went around the entrance into a more open field area. Things seemed much more quiet around here, so maybe the phorus and guardians here haven't heard the commotion. "Hey, it's those pricks who told the guardians what we've really been doing! Get them!" Spoke too soon.

It took me a second to process what 'prick' meant, and I got really angry and getting called a prick. "Hey, who's the real prick here? We were just trying to find the El and we find you pricks sacking this place!"

The phoru that called us pricks shouted back, "Hey, you're a bigger prick! Do you see what those pricks of guardians are doing to my friends!"

"Those pricks are literal pricks, unlike you, who when referred to as a prick, is an insult. What they're doing is just justice."

"'Just' justice for stealing is murder? I'd like to see where you come from prick."

"You're a real prick, you know that phoru?"

Suddenly, an explosion came from behind the phoru and launched him quite a way forward. He rolled on the ground a lot grunting sounds of pain the whole time. Raven stepped into the phoru's old spot and glared at me. "Are you two kids done arguing about who's a bigger prick? Come on Elsword, everybody's waiting for you."

I looked around me and saw that the rest of my group was gone, so I decided to go to Raven. He coughed and said to me, "Elsword, you can't let your emotions get in the way. Imagine if that was a real fighter who was just taunting you. You would get angry and get more focused on killing the person when in reality, you're making yourself more prone to mistakes." I grumbled because I knew he was right.

Following the road, we saw Chung waving to us. I started to wave back, but then he said, "Guys, you've got to check this out! Miss Rena is totally shouting really loudly over there! I'll admit, she's scaring me too, but I don't think I would like to say that in front of her."

Rena being scary? I have to check this out. I heard shouting coming from further down the road, so I ran there. However, two of those grass monster things from before stood menacingly with their arms crossed. It looked really funny because they looked like bouncers, but at the same time it was really intimidating. "Halt," one of them said.

"We won't let anybody pass because now we can't trust any outsiders after those phorus betrayed us," the other one said.

Eve walked up to it and said, "My name is Eve, queen of the Nasod race. May I ask if you saw an elf female go past here a while ago? I can hear her voice from here."

The first guardian said, "Yes, we did see an elf pass by here and we let her through, now leave."

I walked up to the second one and asked it, "Why does she get special treatment, huh? How come she can walk by here while we're stopped by you freaks?"

It said, "We are guardians of the elves. Of course we would let an elf through!"

Aisha spoke to us and said, "Come on guys, let's just leave." She barely whispered this so the guardians couldn't hear her: "I have a plan."

When we were out of hearing range of those guardians I asked her, "What did the genius Miss Aisha come up with now?"

"We walk around them!" she replied with a smile.

I asked her back, "That's it? We walk all this way just so you can tell us that we just walk AROUND the two monsters?"

Aisha looked rather irritated at my remark and replied, "Well, it's certainly more efficient than trying to teleport you all to where Rena is. I can teleport myself long distances relatively easy, but when I have to teleport other people? I just can't do it for that long before I pass out. Magic is some tiring stuff." Despite still being rather irritated at HER, I decided to go with the plan.

Turns out, it actually worked, and we found Rena not too far from them. She was shouting really loud in what I assume is William's face. I looked at Aisha and Eve, and they were standing quite a distance back with their hands over their ears. I wouldn't blame them for covering them up; damn, Rena's loud when she's angry.

Rena is really scary and I was right yet again? Check.

I couldn't listen to what she was saying because it was just so damn loud, but when William started tearing up, she softened up a little. "There there, Mr. Phoru. I know you didn't mean to do these ruins harm," she said in this caring mother voice. "Now, I want you to apologize for setting up this little _PRANK_-" she was trying her best to maintain a sweet smile ,"-and write on this sheet of paper!"

Rena pulled out a sheet of paper and ink and a quill from who knows where (I'm pretty sure her skirt doesn't have pockets) and gave them to the still trembling William. He whispered more to himself than Rena, "Yes, ma'am. I won't do something like this again, I s-swear." He trembled as he wrote and after a while he gave it back to her.

Rena beamed and said to him in her normal cheerful voice, "Good~ I hope you learned your lesson today, Mr. William!"

She noticed us and walked towards us. She said, "Oh hey guys! I just got to the bottom of this. Turns out William felt like pranking his fellow phorus into thinking there was lots of loot at the ruins so he didn't have to go himself. The phorus got a little carried away, and since William is the cause of the problem, I had to go and teach him a lesson~"

Chung pointed at the letter in Rena's hands and asked her, "Miss Rena, what is that?"

Rena held up the letter and said, "Oh this? It's a letter of apology from William. I figured the chief would want some evidence that we stopped this, and this is perfect!" She pulled the letter out and showed us. It contained really poor handwriting (maybe due to how much he was shaking when he was writing it)... and quite a bit of money. Rena smiled and said, "All mail gets better reception when you attach something to it~" she laughed. It was cunning to get the money out of William, but is she really better than him? Questions questions questions.

Then we began walking back towards the village after a somewhat long day of nothing. Along the way, guess what happened to us? Nothing. Those walks are SO BORING.

When we finally got home, I went to my room, put on my PJ's and lay down on my bed. I had trouble sleeping though as I still didn't get word of how the chase after the bandits was going. Looks like I was going to have to wait for tomorrow to see how it went.

* * *

The next day when I woke up, I ran straight towards Chief Hagus's house as I knew Lowe and his search party were back. They were always back the next day. I knocked on the door and sure enough, Lowe was there. He was conversing with Chief Hagus about something, and the chief didn't look too happy. I could already see what Lowe was going to say to me next.

Chief Hagus looked at me and invited me over. Lowe said to me, "Agh, sorry Elsword. We just couldn't catch the bandits."

It took me a moment to process that Lowe failed. Then I simply said, "What?"

Lowe replied, "A guardian of the El blocked our way. We couldn't just get rid of him because he was just doing his job. The disappearance of the El must have made him crazy. If he keeps this up, well then..."

Anne, the store merchant in Ruben village was listening to our conversation from the living room (how did she get there?) and jumped up in shock. She said, "You can't just kill the Ancient Phoru! He's just doing his job! Chief Hagus, maybe Elsword and his party should go. They might be able to reason with it."

Chief Hagus looked at me and sighed. "I suppose you're right. The Ancient Phoru is just delusional from a lack of the El. Very well. Elsword, I'm sorry for giving you little to no rest, but your next mission is to go and find a way to get past the Phoru and retrieve our El."

Lowe looked fairly jealous. "But Chief Hagus, Elsword and his party is inexperienced, and now you're sending them to deal with the Ancient Phoru? Are you kidding?"

My tutor was calling me inexperienced. Jerk. With quite a big smirk on my face, I said to him, "Hey, maybe we just might be able to do something useful for once."

Lowe was silent. Chief Hagus said, "So it's decided. Elsword, ready up now. You may leave when you want to."

I put on a smile now that I was getting a mission that wasn't stupid. "With pleasure, Chief!" As I walked out of his house though, I groaned on the inside. Thanks to Lowe's uselessness, I was stuck with a job that should have been done yesterday.

**Today's lesson: Never trust grown ups.**

* * *

_A Phoru screamed in the ruins. "Dude, that's just gross! I didn't even know a log could throw up that much!"_

_The knight looked at the phoru and said, "You don't know that much about the Tree Knights then. Uh oh! BLERGH!"_

_Across the room, another phoru took a drink and said to the grass monster, "Dude, come on, I thought you guardians were better than this!"_

_The grass thing said, "We have to have something fun to do too!"_

_Glave looked himself and said "Oh man. I should stop drinking when I know I have ADHD. No wait, I mean a real addictive personality trait. Damn."_

_The party in the ruins could only be heard in the forest area, as the walls of the ruins blocked out most of the sound. The most that ever got out was the yelling from the bar fights and people exclaiming their disgust at barf all over the place. Who's going to clean that all up anyways?_


	3. Lowe

"Why can't anybody take me seriously? At least I'm not Adam..."

* * *

Chief Hagus sent me away to deal with the bandits that stole our village's El while he sent Elsword and his gang to deal with a more menial task at hand. Elsword's task wasn't useless, but it's a heck of a lot less important than what we're doing. However, due to the weight of my mission, we had to get this done as fast as possible to beat Elsword in time.

**Today's lesson: Keep moving.**

We were scrambling about the place, looking for clues on where the bandits were. Eventually, one of us turned something up. One of the older trainees spotted a lead around the White Mist Swamp north of the Tree of El. He said he heard shouting and scampering about. That's a problem. First of all, as the name suggests, the swamp is filled with mist and fog, making it extremely difficult to even see where you're going. Secondly, the El is gone, so all the animals are going insane. There's also a certain ancient phoru there, much bigger and scarier than any other phoru in the region, and it's probably very angry at the El disappearing. I really didn't want to have to deal with it, but we had no choice.

I shouted at my men, "All right, let's go to the swamp north of the Tree of El. Yes, that swamp." Naturally, they didn't want to go there given the situation, but they had no choice. I'm pretty good with my words if you know what I mean. Yes, I did threaten to fire them, thank you for asking.

When we got to the swamp, I remembered how big it was. I divided my party into 3 groups: one went searching along the east side, another along the west. I put myself in charge of the group that went in the middle, which consisted of exactly 1 person. It was a dumb idea going alone, but I view all my missions as training. There's also an unspoken rule that goes around my party: I'm left alone when there's a mission. I don't understand why, but I can only get my serious face on when I'm alone.

The rest of my party went off charging as fast as they could. I decided to reduce my pace to a moderately fast walk. Unlike them, who have strength in numbers, I had to conserve my energy so I didn't get caught off guard in battle. I walked past a pond and decided to unsheathe my sword. What pond it was, I have no idea. I couldn't give a landmark of everything in the swamp; it's too foggy. Besides, I'm no geographer.

After about half an hour, I thought I saw somebody behind me. Could it be one of the party members running to ask me for help? My men are good men, so I doubted that would be the case. I turned around and caught just a little glimpse of movement. The air stilled to a halt while I looked around. Nothing. I guessed it was just my imagination. I guessed it was also my imagination that as soon as I turned around, I heard a faint giggling noise. I turned around again and said, "Who's there?" to nobody in particular.

Once again, time stopped as I examined the surroundings. This time, I observed every little detail that was set in front of my eyes. Of course, there was mist everywhere. There was a brownish tree to the left, a couple of mossy rocks right under it. There was the remains of a road, now overgrown with really green grass. There was a boulder right next to the road, but something about what you could make of its shadow seemed off. I walked over to it and it moved. It jumped out even. And when it jumped out, BAM, the shadow hit me right in the face. I stumbled backwards and returned my eyes to the scene. Now, there was an elf in front of me who seemed rather pleased with herself.

"Took you long enough to notice me," she said with a grin.

I felt the place on my face that she kicked me in and asked her, "What the hell did you do that for?"

She replied, "That's how I greet everybody," in that same smile characteristic of elves. Then her expression turned rather annoyed as she added on to it with a shrug, "Except elders and people of importance."

That's how an elf greets people? I asked her for confirmation.

"Of course not," she said. "I only do that to people who seem kind of strong. If they're able to stand up again within 10 seconds, then I believe they can help me."

So she's asking me for help by kicking me in the face. Of course, being the ever helpful one, I asked her, "OK then, what do you need help with? And please don't say as a punching bag."

She looked at me with an expression that said she was in slight thought. "I need you to help me find our forest's El. Some bandits stole it from us a while ago. Although, judging by your uniform and the fact that you're out in the middle of a giant swamp, I'd say you already knew that."

I chuckled to myself. "Of course I did, and I guess I should have known that's what you wanted me to help you with."

She held her hand out and said, "Name's Lime."

I shook her hand. "I'm Lowe, captain of Ruben's El Search Party."

* * *

Lime and I went off in the swamp to find any abnormalities. Lime said she could sense out people and aggravated creatures. Using that sense, she led us further into the swamp. I've never seen this place before. The swamp's not that big, but it's almost always foggy there. In all honesty, it looked exactly the same as the rest of the swamp.

Lime looked over near some limping tree and said, "There should be humans over there." She looked at me and said, "Come on, let's sneak over there. Let's see what's up."

I looked to where she was pointing and saw some weird figures in the fog. Must be the bandits then.

Lime got on all fours and started crawling towards the encampment, and I put my sword on my back and followed. We snuck close and closer until we could finally hear the voices. I also couldn't help my self from sneaking a peak under Lime's skirt. When it's literally the only thing you can look at that's not the ground, you can't help yourself. ANYWAY, we could mainly hear out two voices. One of them sounded a little more panicked than the other.

"-you have to help us!" said one voice.

The other was more 'big' sounding and replied, "Would you mind telling me how you got found out?"

"Some guys were just charging aimlessly and found us!"

"Where did you hide?"

"Near the road!"

"That might explain why you were found, _sir_," the other one said with a snarl.

"Please, we're all getting arrested! I don't want to spend another damn day in prison!" the panicked one shouted. Suddenly his tone got calmer and said, "If you ever get caught, I highly suggest that you try not to drop the soap. Ick. Some people in the bars are just weird."

We decided to take a look at the bandits. Lime signaled me to get in a position that we can easily surprise attack them. I nodded and started crawling away again. Unfortunately with all the gear I was carrying, I was making a lot of noise. The bandits noticed this and instead of me getting the drop on them, they got the drop on me. I jumped up and took my sword off my back and prepared to face off against them.

I could hear Lime hiss, "Damn," as she let loose arrows from her bow. A bandit tried to swing his club at me, but it was slow, clumsy, and with horrible aim. I easily rolled passed it and hit him with the hilt of my sword. He was knocked out instantly, and I realized just how inexperienced these bandits were. I almost felt sorry for them, but they bought this upon themselves. I let my guard down, and some big guy took a swing at me and sent me up in the air. I gasped for breath as soon as I hit the ground and groaned. Despite their inexperience, they sure were strong.

I tried to stand, but a bandit flew right into me. "Sorry Lowe!" I heard Lime say. The bandit groaned on top of me, and I just pushed him off and punched him right in the mask to make sure he was out for the fight. All the bandits were preoccupied with Lime, who was now kicking and punching whoever got too close to her. I fumbled around the ground trying to find my sword and noticed that a bandit was trying to get a clear shot at Lime with a throwing knife. I got up and decided to punch him in the back of the head to screw with his vision. 1 bandit down.

He landed right next to my sword, so I went over to it and grabbed it. Getting back into the fight, I swung my sword at a couple of bandits trying to get out of range of Lime. Some bandits noticed me and took their attention off of Lime to focus me down. For whatever damn reason, instead of trying to surround me, they lined up in a straight line. Whatever rocks these guys boats. I would have beaten them all anyways.

The first one raised his dagger and tried to slash at me, but I expected this and easily countered it, sending the poor guy flying. The second one in line raised his club, but before he had time to swing it, I turned around and yelled, "MEGA SLASH!" knocking the guy into the rest of the line. Seeing this display reminded me of bowling, and to add insult to injury, I decided to shout, "And it's a spare!"

There was an explosion of fire right next to me, and a moment after, a couple of bandits were sent flying through the air on fire. One of my friends, N.U., walked up to me and did a twirl. N.U. stands for Name Unavailable because he refuses to tell anybody his real name. He's got blond hair and wears a red blindfold over his eyes, but he says it doesn't affect his vision. He said in his cool, or dare I say it, groovy accent that we've come to expect, "What's up dude? Sorry for taking so long. We've got some bandits on the run though! The rest of my guys should be here soon." He readied up fireballs and sent them flying towards bandits around Lime. N.U. noticed her and asked me, "So what do we have here? Did you finally find yourself a girlfriend?"

I replied with a more annoyed look on my face, "Hey, I just met her. You're crazy; she's just looking for the El that was stolen, like us."

He smiled and said, "I see. She's pretty cute though. I wouldn't mind asking her out," as he sent more fireballs exploding onto the bandits. I rolled my eyes and backfisted a guy that was trying to sneak a hit behind me. I didn't know he was there, but I felt like doing something that would have looked cool in the movies.

The odds were now in our favor as the rest of N.U.'s men came down, along with screaming bandits, disarmed of course, because they more than likely found their weapons too heavy to carry with them. N.U. smiled and said, "Ha, looks like things are getting way more interesting." He sent more fireballs to catch the retreating bandits while I decided to go help Lime out.

I cut down some bandits surrounding her and made my own way into the circle that Lime was in. She was currently kicking at some short guys, but others were about to smash her in the back. I made my way to them and slammed the face of my sword into them, knocking them all aside.

"Glad you could join me," she said. "I was worried I'd break a fingernail back there."

I asked her, "Do most girl elves care that much about their appearance?"

She smirked and replied, "As if!" and kicked another bandit in the face.

I saw the last team of the El Search Party come from the opposite direction of the battlefield, but they looked like they were running from something instead. And suddenly, all of us heard it.

A big giant roar, which was fitting a for a big giant animal, which was exactly what we got. It stood up on its hind feet and enlarged itself, looking bigger than the hill was. Granted, the hill wasn't that big, but still. All of us knew that was a guardian, and a really ticked off guardian at that.

The phoru launched several people aside with its claws and breathed fire into our general direction. We all ducked and the majority of us, bandits and search party members, started running away. Lime stood wide-eyed and tried to block off the creature. She extended her arms and said to it, "Please stop! What's wrong, creature of the forest?"

The phoru roared in reply.

Lime said to it, "You don't need to hurt all these people. There are some you can pummel into the ground, but not all of these humans are bad! Some of them are trying to retrieve the El from the ones who stole it!"

The phoru grumbled.

Lime lowered her arms and looked down. She scratched her head and said, "Well, I don't really know, but I could always just read their emotions to see if they're lying or not."

The phoru roared again. This time, Lime started running back. She grabbed my arm and we ran away from the beast together.

She hissed, "Damnit, it's still pissed at you humans for stealing the El."

I questioned her, "But why? Only minority are responsible for this."

She said, "I don't know either, but he looks like he doesn't care. He was probably driven insane from the disappearance of the El stone in that tree."

I looked through the mist (which was now clearing up) at the Tree of El. I noticed that it looked slightly weaker than before, with leaves falling off and branches starting to droop.

I asked Lime, "What do we do now?"

She let go of my hand and said, "We just wait until the guardian calms down. When that will happen, I don't know. The longer we wait, the worse this situation is."

I clenched my fist. "This is bad."

Lime looked into my eyes and asked me, "Hey, are you really trying to return the El to its rightful spot on the Tree of El?"

I said right back a little annoyed, "Of course I am! Who the hell do you think I am?"

Lime looked a bit skeptical, then she called out, "Airelinna!"

A huge burst of light appeared right beside her, and out of it was the voice of a fairy, smooth and delicate. "Oh hey Lime. What would you like right now?"

Lime pointed at me and said to Airelinna, "Read his mind for me. See if he's lying to me or not."

_Oh crap,_ I thought. _She's reading my mind. Don't think about Lime's panties. Think of how I'm not a liar, because I'm not. Jeez, is her trust in me that low? Low. Heh, that's how my name's pronounced._

After that, I felt a presence leave my head and the fairy whispered into Lime's ear. She looked at me with a look that would make any grown man wet himself.

**Today's lesson: Keep moving.**

* * *

Chief Hagus looked at Elsword and invited him over. I said to him, "Agh, sorry Elsword. We just couldn't catch the bandits."

Elsword simply said, "What?"

I replied, "A guardian of the El blocked our way. We couldn't just get rid of him because he was just doing his job. The disappearance of the El must have made him crazy. If he keeps this up, well then..."

Anne was listening to our conversation from the living room and jumped up in shock. She said, "You can't just kill the Ancient Phoru! He's just doing his job! Chief Hagus, maybe Elsword and his party should go. They might be able to reason with it."

Chief Hagus looked at Elsword and sighed. "I suppose you're right. The Ancient Phoru is just delusional from a lack of the El. Very well. Elsword, I'm sorry for giving you little to no rest, but your next mission is to go and find a way to get past the Phoru and retrieve our El."

I was getting replaced by a kid? I've only been training him for a little while now and now he's getting a mission even I couldn't do? I had to speak up about this. "But Chief Hagus, Elsword and his party is inexperienced, and now you're sending them to deal with the Ancient Phoru? Are you kidding?"

With quite a big smirk on Elsword's face, he said to me, "Hey, maybe we just might be able to do something useful for once."

I was silent. Chief Hagus said, "So it's decided. Elsword, ready up now. You may leave when you want to."

Elsword smiled and said, "With pleasure, Chief!" He looked confused about something though. Almost like I was leaving some details out. I would never hear the end of it when Elsword finds out that Lime beat me up. He just shrugged and walked out the house though. With that, I released a breath I didn't even know I had and painfully trudged back to my house.


	4. Lime

"When you die, your body becomes a corpse~"

* * *

Elsword told us about what happened to Lowe, and he looked pretty annoyed. Oh who am I kidding, he always looks annoyed! I try to give him friendly smiles and jokes, but he has quite an odd sense of humor, let me tell you that.

So off we go the White Mist Swamp to clean up after Ruben's El Search Party, and to pass the time, we had some friendly talk along the way. I started up a conversation by asking Elsword, "So, how's it feel to be receiving your first real mission?"

Elsword looked at me like the ruins wasn't a real mission (which in fact, it wasn't) and said back, "Just great! We're CLEANING UP after another guy's mission, so it sounds like a lot of fun! Really!"

I saw right through his sarcastic act and knew that he was actually a bit nervous, and excited too, about his first real mission.

**Today's lesson: There's more to Elsword than what appears~**

Chung asked me, "So Miss Rena? You've been out many places right? Tell me how you felt the first time you left your village, if you want to of course."

I smiled. Chung was always so polite. I replied to him, "Well, the first time I left my village, I was very young. I was orphaned when I was a baby, and Chief Emiera, took me in. She was rather nice around me, but I felt like there was something more than she was letting me on. One day, I snuck out of our house to spy on her. She was going out through a maze in the woods, and I was certain she had no idea where she was going. She came up to another elf, one with shortish red hair and a big brown cloak, and one that I've never seen before, and my mother figure took out a sword I didn't even know she had with her at the time. The two of them talked for a little while, and sometime after, Emiera left.

"The other elf was still standing there, so I couldn't just tailgate Emiera without getting caught. I tried to hide, but of course, I forgot about how elves could detect each other through a communication with nature. I was caught, but instead of leading me back to my house, the elf instead taught me how to use a bow and do martial arts. She must have thought that Emiera simply letting me follow her must have meant something, but I don't really know what goes on in both of their heads.

"Eventually, it came time for my first mission. Which is to retrieve the El from the bandits. Which is right now."

Chung processed all this information and then asked me, "So if this is your first mission, just how old are you?"

I opened my mouth to answer but Elsword asked me, "So this is your first real mission too huh? You seem to know an awful lot about things though. Why is that?"

Aisha answered, "A woman's got her secrets. Best not to try to find out what they are, or bad things might happen to you."

Elsword said, "I said I was sorry! Besides, keeping your so called secrets in the middle of your room isn't exactly the smartest thing to do!"

Aisha glared back and said, "You're not even supposed to be in my room in the first place!"

Elsword said right back, "But it's MY house."

I sighed. Someday, those two would learn. I looked at Raven to see if he was thinking of anything, but he just appeared to only focus on walking.

Eve asked me, "Do you know what these two are talking about?"

I winked and replied, "A woman's got her secrets. Best not to pry in on them~"

Eve nodded and looked back at where Aisha was hitting Elsword before continuing to walk. I called back towards them, "Hey you two! Get over here, the swamp's not going to come to you, unless of course, the swamp was on some floating island!"

Aisha looked at me and shrugged before letting Elsword go.

* * *

I looked at Miss Rena while we were walking. Did she forget about my question? I'm genuinely curious about her age and how long it takes for elves to mature and all that. Maybe she was deliberately trying to find ways to avoid my question. I kind of understand, but what's the harm in telling me her age? Agh. Maybe Big Sis Aisha or Bro knows. They've known her longer.

Wait, did they know her longer? We met at the same time, I know that for a fact, but at the same time, I felt like I was late for the party. How does that work?

I'll have to question my father about it once I get home. He's a wise old sage that understands feelings and premonitions perfectly.

Hey wait, my father's not a wise old sage! Actually, I have no idea what his profession is... I'll have to question him anyways.

I'll just stop thinking about this topic. That sounds like a good plan.

* * *

Elsword was teaching Eve what anger was, and it was rather unsuccessful.

Here's some of the conversation: "Elsword, may Eve ask you why you and Aisha were yelling at each other?"

Elsword replied, "Well, I got pretty angry at Aisha because she got pretty angry at me."

Eve asked him, "What's it mean to be angry?"

Elsword thought over this for a moment and said, "When you want to prove your point and some people aren't getting it, you tend to be angry. I don't exactly know how to explain anger because it's an emotion, and you generally don't explain emotions."

Eve said, "I see."

Elsword pointed at me and said, "I'm pretty sure Rena knows how to though. If there's anything about life you want to ask about, Rena's your go-to-person."

I smiled and said to Eve, "Well, I tend to have a more positive outlook on this side of life, but that's usually true among most elves. So you want to learn what anger is?"

Without giving her a chance to reply, I said, "Well, to understand anger, you have to understand other emotions, like happiness. Happiness is when you feel joy in something. It's what you feel when you feel pride in something that you've done or that warm fuzzy feeling you get when somebody you like tries to kiss you~ Sadness is the exact opposite of that. You could say that when you lack happiness, you're sad. Anger is just a more violent version of being sad!"

Eve processed all of this and asked me, "So Elsword and Aisha were just violently expressing their sadness?"

I beamed at Eve and replied, "Well, I doubt they were sad, but they were in a disagreement. I guess when you disagree with somebody and want to prove your point, you get angry. You should know all of this by now if you have emotions though~"

Eve looked at me quizzically and said, "But Eve does not understand. I, er, I mean Eve does not have emotions."

I just gave her another smile and thought to myself, _Keep telling yourself that. You wouldn't express that much curiosity if you didn't have emotions after all~_

* * *

Along the way to the swamp, Elsword got bored and said we should play a Rock Paper Scissors tournament to see who's the luckiest out of all of us. Ironically enough, Raven won. I say ironically because Raven has a pretty unlucky background. Raven must of known this as well, and he started chuckling to himself with a small smile. Raven doesn't smile all that much, but when he does, he actually looks pretty handsome.

Raven chuckled to himself, "I guess this arm's good for more than just killing things."

After quickly accepting the fact that they lost, Elsword, Aisha, and Chung started laughing at Raven's statement. I smiled and Eve was trying to understand what was so funny about Raven's joke.

We were having a good, light-hearted time, but I felt that there was another presence somewhere in a tree in front of us. I tensed up and said to the group, "Wait. Somebody's ahead of us."

They immediately stopped laughing, and the group readied themselves up for battle. The presence noticed this too and dropped out of the tree. It turned out to be an elf girl who looked somewhat familiar. She held her hands out in front of her and said to us, "Whoa, is that how you treat a person watching you from a really high tree?"

I realized who it was and shouted her name, "Lime!"

Lime looked at me and smiled. "Well, if it isn't Rena! You've grown a bit since I last met you."

I said to her, "It's only been 2 weeks since I last saw you."

She replied, "Keywords being 'a' and 'bit'."

Raven looked at me and asked, "So, do you know this girl?'

Lime looked at him and huffed, "Hey, I am not a girl! I prefer being called a woman, or even a female, but I am definitely not a girl!"

I looked at her and said, "You sure are acting pretty girly about this."

She glared at me, but it was okay. We were pretty good friends. She told me, "Oh yeah, Rena. I need your help."

I asked her, "Whatever happened to kicking people in the face when you need their help?"

She replied, "I already did that yesterday. Besides, it's only funny when that person's a complete stranger. I also think I should start wearing pants, but that's besides the point. I think you already know what I'm going to ask you to help me with, so eh. I don't feel like explaining myself again."

I said to her, "No problem! We'll be glad to help you, especially if it's about getting the El back."

I looked at Elsword and added, "Right, Elsword?"

He shrugged and said, "Whatever. The more the merrier I guess."

Lime debriefed us on what was going on with the Ancient Phoru, and I said to her, "Well, that's exactly why we're being sent here in the first place! It shouldn't be too hard to convince the phoru that what it's doing is wrong with two elves lecturing it~"

Lime shrugged and said, "If it doesn't listen, then what happens then? Do we kill it?"

Raven spoke up at this and said, "No. I believe in Rena being able to turn the guardian around, just like what she did with me."

* * *

I guess I should talk about Raven's history now. You see, Raven had all of his friends and comrades killed just because he was a commoner in a city where nobles ruled the place in a strict social hierarchy. He went insane from grief (and his replacement mechanical arm that was given to him by a Nasod after being severely injured) and tried to destroy the city that cast him out. Eventually, somebody found him and bought him to us, and we managed to snap him out of his insanity for the time being. It was a plan proposed by Elsword that was so simple, it just might work.

Elsword said to Raven, "So, if you're so worried about how you destroyed all that stuff, why don't you just rebuild all the stuff that you destroyed? Wouldn't that somehow balance it out?"

Aisha obviously thought that plan was stupid, but I thought there actually was some sense in what Elsword said, and Raven believed that too. I gave him a few words of encouragement and a friendly smile, and he was back on his way to redeeming himself.

* * *

Lime looked at Raven and asked him, "So if talking to it doesn't work, we just come up with a plan on the spot?"

Elsword said, "That's pretty much it. Bad things usually happen when we think things through."

Lime raised her eyebrow and asked Elsword, "What do you mean?"

Elsword actually looked confused for a second, but shrugged. He replied, "I don't know, but I have a bad vibe about thinking about plans beforehand."

Chung added, "Our plans are usually just go in and punch people."

Eve added on to that, "These people think they can solve any problem either by punching it in the face or asking me to blow it up."

I laughed at them. "Oh guys! We've only been through two missions together, and you're already generalizing the all up?"

Aisha looked at Elsword and said, "Well, red-hair over here thinks that 2 is a good number to base assumptions on."

He glared back and said, "Watch it, flat-chest."

Aisha teleported right up to Elsword, but he didn't flinch at all. "What did you call me, punk?"

"Flat-chest. Something wrong? I'm only speaking the truth!"

Lime walked up to me and asked me, "Should we do something?"

I scratched my chin and shrugged. "They'll get over it soon enough. If they don't, well, I have my ways of getting through to them." I gestured to Raven, Eve, and Chung. "Come on guys, let's go!"

Pretty soon in the walk, we heard shouting coming from a remote area a little off the road. Elsword said we should investigate it, so we walked off the road towards the shouting. Lime decided to scout ahead and look for the phoru while we were doing this.

We hid behind a bush out in the middle and looked into a camp. There appeared to be people in strange masks packing up tents, and one big person was shouting at a littler one. Aisha whispered in my ears, "Rena, do you think these guys are the bandits that stole the El?"

I whispered back, "I don't know. They look the part. We should try walking in and see what they do. If they draw weapons, we give them a good beating. If they run away, we chase after them. If they don't do anything, we leave them for a while, then return to see what they're up to."

Aisha nodded and relayed this information to the rest of the group. We all got up and walked into the campground. All the people there froze and looked at us.

Eve stepped up and greeted them, "Hello. We heard shouting coming from this direction and came over here to investigate. Is anything the matter?"

The big guy and the little person getting shouted at talked to each other for a bit and then the little one said, "What are you doing here? This is kind of our territory, so we would kind of appreciate it if you ran off."

I said to them, "Well, I see that you are perfectly fine." I grinned. "We just wanted to see what you're up to."

The big one said, "Leaving."

Elsword asked them, "I can see that. Why are you guys leaving?"

The big and little guys conversed with each other again, then the big one replied, "Because the guardian of El here in this swamp is pretty ticked. We don't want to be in its way when it probably comes here."

The little guys chimed in, "Now scram. We mean it." The big guy pulled out a club and all the others in the camp followed suit.

Chung asked himself, "Are these guys stupid? Don't they know who we are?"

He readied his cannon and I got out my bow. Elsword unsheathed his sword, while Aisha started getting her magic ready. Raven looked on and scoffed. He said, "Well, this should be fun."

A bandit in a fox mask said to us, "Look at us and then look at you. Do you see how outnumbered you are?"

Eve quickly scanned the area and replied, "Yes. There is about a five to one difference in numbers here, which means thirty of you compared to us six. That is nothing and it means nothing."

Elsword smirked. "Just who the hell do you think we are?"

Aisha raised her wand up high and shouted, "WE AREN'T JUST KIDS TO BE PUSHED AROUND!"

And Chung added, "And Mr. Raven and Miss Rena aren't kids to begin with. To be honest, I'm not sure about her-" he pointed to Eve, "but it doesn't matter."

Elsword took out his badge that stated he was in Ruben's El Search Party and said, "By the orders of Chief Hagus, you are under arrest!"

The bandits looked at each other and laughed. One of them in the back shouted, "Let's get them!"

Aisha raised her wand and yelled out, "LIGHTNING BOLT!" and let loose a jolt of electricity from her one, instantly frying a bandit in front of her. The bandit fell to the floor and grumbled something about cake.

Seeing this display, all the bandits dropped their weapons immediately and Elsword looked quite dumbfounded (if Aisha was narrating this, she probably would have said that he literally was dumb~) and said in disgust, "That's it? You guys are giving up just because Aisha here can use magic?"

The bandits nodded in unison.

Eve called out to us: "Wait. I believe the Ancient Phoru is tearing through the swamp," and pointed in a direction.

Chung said, "What? Damn, how could we have not noticed it sooner?"

Raven shouted, "Come on, let's go!"

We all followed suit, but Elsword stopped after about a second. He looked back at the bandits and motioned to them, "What are you guys, deaf? You're still under arrest. Follow us."

I noticed the bandits simply looked at each other in confusion.

* * *

When I got to the scene where the phoru was, I noticed Lime trying to talk to it. The phoru said to Lime, "Even you are unsure of that human's intentions."

Lime replied to it, "Yes yes, we've been over this already. We've also been over how what you're doing is wrong and blah blah blah blah." Lime noticed us and said to the phoru, "If you keep this up, I'd like to remind you that I bought a few friends with me," and she cocked her head towards us.

The phoru replied in anger, "You've bought humans with you to keep me in check? This is what I was afraid of!" He roared and got on all fours.

Elsword got ready to charge in there, but Raven put his claw on his shoulder, and shook his head in a fashion that said, "Not yet."

Lime tried to reason with it once again. "Stop! I only bought them here with me if things got too out of hand, and now you're just bringing it _really_ close to that point."

The phoru roared and charged at Lime. Lime quickly did a backflip over it and hissed, "So it's come to this, huh?" She knacked an arrow into her wrist bow and fired it into the back of the phoru's head.

The phoru quickly turned around and swiped Lime out of the air, and Raven let Elsword go and looked on as Aisha, Eve, and Chung followed him. I walked up to him and asked, "So you aren't going?"

He replied without looking at me, "I'm merely observing how Elsword deals with a real situation."

I nodded, and I noticed a few of the bandits trying to sneak their way out. I shouted at them, "Oh no you don't!" and fired a volley of arrows that narrowly missed their heads. No, I wasn't aiming for their heads, and I'm not a bad shot. The bandits froze and sighed and slumped back down on the ground.

Lime quickly recovered and tried to rejoin the fight, but what she noticed just confused her. She was probably expecting Elsword, Aisha, Eve, and Chung to be getting tossed around, but Chung was pretty sturdy in tanking all the unnecessary hits. Elsword dodged whatever else got through Chung and Aisha and Eve were standing far in the back away from the danger.

Elsword took a quick slash at the phoru's underbelly and quickly dodged an arm swipe. He shouted, "Do you have any idea how we solve problems?"

The pressure was taken off of Chung for a second and he added, "We kick our problems in the face!" Chung charged forward and shouted, "BRUTAL SWEEP!" knocking the phoru back a distance at a nearby cliff.

Aisha shouted at the phoru, "We're only doing this for your own good!" and hurled fireballs at it.

Finally, the phoru gave up. Eve noticed its fur was still on fire and told her two drones, Moby and Remy, to dowse it. The phoru took note of this act and said to Lime and I, "So, you really are doing this for my own good huh?"

Lime said, "That's what I've been trying to tell you." She sighed and sat down. "Hey, at least you'll recover after some time."

I frowned and said, "It's not your fault you went insane. I know you're all ruffled up from the disappearance from the El, we all are. But we're honestly trying to get it back."

The phoru said to me, "I hope you're telling the truth, elf." He sighed and laid his chin down on his paws.

Elsword can't understand the phoru, but he said, "Don't worry, we're not trying to get the El back, we ARE getting it back." He smiled a sincere smiled and patted it on the head.

Raven said, "Rebuilding what is destroyed and making it stronger..."

Eve looked at the bandits on the ground and asked us, "What about those fools?"

Aisha said, "Well, they're under arrest. We take them to a prison and let the rest take care of itself." Eve nodded and the bandits groaned.

As I was preparing to leave, the phoru said to me, "Wait." I looked back and gestured him to continue. "You seem like a trustworthy person. There is, however, a life crystal that a phoru mother dropped when fleeing from this place." He sighed and I guessed what happened to the mother. He continued, "I would like you to take care of it. Take care of it, for me, and all the animals and creatures awaiting the return of El in Ruben."

The Ancient Phoru dug up a large crystal and handed it to me. I smiled and said to it, "You have my promise, old friend."

"Of course I do Rena. Of course I do."

* * *

"Alright guys, this is as far as I should go."

Elsword asked Lime, "Why?"

She replied, "Because I accomplished my mission. That's it. Besides, I feel kind of awkward when I'm in a human town. I'm sure you'll understand. You'd feel the same way if you were in an elf village." Lime ran off into the forest and we waved her off.

When we got back to Ruben, Lowe asked us about our mission. Elsword smirked and said, "Mission accomplished. Hey look, we even bought these bandits."

Lowe looked at the group behind us and said to him, "Very impressive. Listen Elsword." He sighed out a bit. "You're becoming quite good with your sword, I see. I would like you to continue the chase after Banthus."

Chung jumped on Elsword and said to Lowe, "Hey, we helped!"

Elsword pushed Chung off and beamed, but then quickly frowned. He asked Lowe, "Wait, what about you?"

Lowe looked up at the sky. "You started somewhere and I started somewhere. I think I'm gonna train new recruits for now." He looked at the bandits. "In fact, I have an idea of who they might be."

Aisha noticed he was looking at the bandits and asked Lowe, "You're kidding right?"

I said to Aisha, "He's only trying to help them rebuild their lives. He's trying to get them to return what they stole."

Raven looked at the bandits with longing. "At least they only have to return what they stole." Raven said to Lowe, "If you think you can do it, you have all my support."

Lowe nodded in appreciation. "Thanks." He looked at Elsword and said to him, "Elsword, before you go, you might want to have Chief Hagus see you off. You know, simple good manners, and an omen of good will."

Elsword smiled and said, "Got it. Good luck."

We started heading towards us and Lowe called out to us, "And good job out there today. Good luck to you too!"

I waved him off and smiled. Even below what appears to be a dumb exterior, Lowe is a good man at heart. The Ancient Phoru just wanted to do what he thought was best, and Elsword, I don't even know. He's so brave and cheerful at the same time. If he'd mature a bit, he'd grow into a great leader.

**Today's lesson: There's more to Elsword than what appears~**

As we were walking to Chief Hagus's house, Chung remembered something and said to me, "Hey Miss Rena? You never answered my question from earlier. You know, what your age really is?"

Aisha added, "And please don't beat around the bush. I need to get an idea of when you're supposed to mature."

I giggled as I understood completely. The boys and Eve didn't understand, but I knew how important this question must be to Aisha, so I answered honestly. "17!"

**Today's lesson: With me, there might actually be less than what appears. Now off you go~**


	5. Chung (sharply goes crazy for no reason)

"Bill"

"Bill"

"Bill"

"Bill"

"STOP SAYING BILL"

* * *

"What? No, you have to tell him that we can't go there!"

"What's the matter? I thought armor was supposed to not be afraid of the dark!"

I thought to Freitunier and Destroyer, "And last time I checked, armor and cannons aren't supposed to talk. Look, I'm getting there. I just don't know how I'm supposed to tell Elsword."

Destroyer said in my head, "Come on Chung! What's the point of defending yourself from the dark if you're too scared to even get near it in the first place!"

Freitunier said to it, "Shut up! Don't you know what happened to his dad?"

I said to Freitunier, "We all know what happened. They might think I don't know since I apparently have a mild case of amnesia, but I know exactly what happened to my dad. Destroyer, I'm not strong enough to take on the darkness by myself yet."

Destroyer said back to me, "I'm not, I'm not, I'M NOT! God Chung, when are you going to get that filthy mindset out of your mind? Yes, you are strong enough to be stronger than the dark. You're not doing this alone either. Look at the person who's trying to get you to get out of your shell in the first place!"

I looked over at Bro who was yelling at Big Sis Aisha about being scared of the forest. He was saying something like, "Come on Aisha! It's just a lack of light, I doubt you'll get that hurt."

Big Sis Aisha yelled back, "You don't know that, you twit! Have you seen that forest? It's scary in there!"

Bro scoffed. "Of course I've seen it, the forest is right there." Bro pointed in a direction and I noticed that there were purple trees looking at us menacingly from a distance.

I said to him, "Come on Bro, there's got to be a way around it. Do we have to go through that forest?"

Bro said, "If you can find a better way to get to Elder, be my guest Chung. Be my freaking guest."

Miss Rena smiled awkwardly and said, "Now now Elsword, no need to use that language."

I pointed in a direction near the forest, but not directly at it. "There's an alternate path we can use!"

Bro said, "Nah, that path would take too long."

Big Sis Aisha said to him, "Come on! It would only take us an extra hour of normal walking. Besides, if there are monsters in that forests, we'll most likely be delayed by having to get rid of them!"

Bro replied, "Of course I know that too! That's an even better reason to go into the forest."

I said to him, "But the forest is not that big, so the path's probably not very big either."

Bro shook his head. "Nope, it'd still take too long."

I replied back to him, "But Bro, it's only a couple extra minutes!"

"Too long."

"But-"

Bro showed his palm to me in the stop gesture. He said plainly, "Too long."

"Bro, it's dangerous for me to be near the darkness! I remember what happened and how I got here! My dad was exposed to the darkness too, and now he's evil as any other demon! I can't go there!" I pleaded.

He said back to me, "So? Sucks to your dad."

Big Sis Aisha said to him "Elsword? Can you be any more rude?" I looked towards the forest, hoping that my face showed a stoic expression, like Miss Eve.

Sir Raven told Big Sis Aisha and I, "Are you two afraid of the dark? Whatever Elsword decides we should go with, I'm going with. Are you going to do the same?"

Miss Eve said, "I believe that Chung does have a valid excuse for not wanting to go through that forest though. However, studies show that more people who face their fear and potential danger show less concern whenever said fear or danger pops up."

Bro said to me, "Chung, this should be good training for you. I don't care where you come from or how allergic you are to the damn dark; I'm gonna make you come out of that damn shell of armor of yours."

If Destroyer could smirk, he probably would have. "See, even the Nasod and the red hair agree with me!" I finally sighed in defeat.

**Today's Journal Entry: Elsword is crazy.**

* * *

The first few steps into the shadow forest were some of the scariest of my life. I can't believe it could be so dark on one side of an invisible boundary, and on the other, just a few steps away, it was perfectly day time. I looked back in front of me and could barely see a couple meters in front of me. Freitunier could feel the darkness emanating from the forest and told me, "Chung, you'd better get out of here and fast. Prolonged exposure to darkness could be fatal to you." I nodded in reply.

I noticed Bro sneaking up behind Big Sis Aisha and prepared for the inevitable scream by covering my ears.

Bro started laughing. "Oh man, you look so funny when you scream!"

Big Sis looked at Miss Eve and asked her, "Permission to smack this doofus?"

Miss Eve nodded and Big Sis smacked Bro on top of the head. It looked like it hurt.

Suddenly, I heard Miss Rena say, "Guys, wait up." Her ears twitched a little. "I think I feel something."

Sir Raven got out his sword and looked around. From what I could tell, we were already lost. I readied my cannon and prepared for the worst. I saw light coming from some direction and pointed my cannon at it, ready to fire a homing shot. Fortunately, it was just a floating blue thing.

While Bro was massaging his head, Big Sis asked Miss Rena, "Rena, what's that?"

Miss Rena replied, "Oh, that's just a wisp. There really shouldn't be any wisps around here. This place must be pretty evil if the souls of the dead are forced to stay here."

Big sis gasped. "Did you mean that thing is a ghost?"

Miss Rena winked and replied, "Essentially."

Sir Raven looked over at it. "I say we should try to release it from this world."

Miss Eve looked confused and asked him, "And how do we go about expelling these supernatural beings?"

Bro walked up to the wisp and slashed it in half. "There," he said. "Come on, there's still a way to go."

I was perplexed by this. I asked Bro, "Did you just release that spirit? By slashing it, right?"

Bro nodded.

I continued, "So we don't have to go through a whole exorcism thing or whatnot to release a ghost from this world?"

Miss Eve said to me, "According to my word database, exorcism is when you take a spirit out of a person's body, not when you release it from this world."

I said, "But there has to be a more... elegant way of doing it. You're demonstrating to us that we can expel ghosts from this realm of reality just by beating it up?"

Miss Rena laughed. "Oh Chung, it's always been that way!"

I stuttered, "B-but-"

Bro looked tired of this conversation. He spoke up, "No buts. Come on, if anything gets in our way, we get rid of it. And while you're at it, why don't you go pick up Aisha? She looks like a frightened puppy."

Bro gestured towards Big Sis Aisha, and she really did look scared to death. I picked her up and started trudging along. I murmured to myself, "Why do I get to carry both a full-sized girl and a giant cannon?"

Destroyer said to me, "Think of this as training, Chung. No gain, no pain."

Freitunier said, "I think it's the other way around, idiot."

Destroyer said to me, "Hey wait a minute, are you calling me fat?"

I thought back to him, "No, I'm calling you heavy. As if an inanimate object like you could really get fat."

Destroyer said back to me, "You don't know my eating habits!"

Freitunier said, "That's because you don't have eating habits!"

I sighed. Lugging this dead weight around the entire forest was going to be tedious.

At last, we came up to something interesting. It looked like a...

"What the hell is this really brightly colored door doing in the middle of a dark and gloomy forest like this?" Bro asked.

Sir Raven examined it for a little bit. Finally, he said, "This is probably a trap. Be on your guards."

I dropped Big Sis down and she cradled into fetal position. I readied my Destroyer and knocked the door down what I saw on the other side was what appeared to be a tea party between a little girl, a rabbit, and a guy with a sick top hat. The rabbit looked at us weirdly and I smiled awkwardly. I apologized "Heh, sorry for bursting down that door over there. Did I interrupt something?"

I walked out of the room that was somehow stuck in the middle of the doorway and walked around it. What I saw on the other side was what appeared to be an angry looking purple tree.

I stared blankly at it, and it stared back. And we stared. Finally, Big Sis broke the awkward silence as she ran out screaming, "GHOSTS!" and promptly ran into Miss Rena. I looked over my shoulder and saw three wisps coming from where Big Sis ran. This distraction was used by the tree to swat me across the forest into a nearby rock.

I blanked out for a second and when I opened my eyes again, I saw Bro looking straight at me. He said to me, "Get up Chung. Don't get distracted by whatever Aisha's scared of, because it's most likely completely stupid." Bro turned around and slashed at the tree that swatted me. Urging myself to get up, I looked at the wisps. Sir Raven, and Miss Eve were taking good care of the wisps, but some got through. The wisps got through phased into trees, and they grew faces. Angry faces.

I heard Miss Rena call out, "Everybody! Don't let any wisp touch a tree. It'll grow into an ent and be a pain to deal with later!"

I looked over at Bro, and he was trying to encourage Big Sis to fight. Well both of them are currently out, so I'll just have to do something about it myself. I readied Destroyer and charged at the ent that sent me flying. The ent threw its arms up and I was confused for a bit. I looked down on the ground and noticed thorns were slowly starting to rise. I quickly side stepped out of the way, keeping my forward momentum going. I reached the ent and with a thrust of my cannon, I knocked it up. The ent landed on the ground on its back with a thud, and I took this opportunity to smash Destroyer onto its face. With this, I saw its face slowly fade out as the spirit that entered its body was released.

I took another quick look at my surroundings. I noticed a wisp trying to get to a tree and I shouted, "No you don't! Take this! Homing Shot!" I readied a cannonball into the Destroyer and sent it out towards the wisp as a rocket. There was an explosion of blue as the wisp was released. I expected the tree it almost touched to be on fire, but it looked unsettlingly unscathed.

I didn't even notice that there was another ent trying to kill me until Bro showed up and slashed it in half before it got the chance to swipe at me. I asked him, "So, did you convince Big Sis Aisha to help us?"

Bro shook his head. He said, "Nah. I hope she does though. I don't want to try to force her out of her shell because it just might backfire." Bro grimaced then looked towards the rest of the battle. "Come on, there's still work to be done."

We hurried over and joined Sir Raven trying to defend against four ents at once. He said to us, "Thanks. I was worried I might have to blow something up with my arm."

I said to him, "I already blew something up with my Destroyer here. What's the harm?"

Sir Raven said back, "I suppose you're right. But restraint is one form of training, and another classic form of honing your skills is by practicing on trees!"

Sir Raven slashed through the arm of an ent with ease. I knocked one over onto another, and Bro was deflecting swipes with his sword, then cutting up the tree into little pieces.

Miss Rena wiped fake sweat off her forehead and sighed. "I think that's all of them."

Miss Eve asked Bro, "And where is Aisha?"

Bro answered, "She should be around there somewhere," and waved his arm in the direction we came from.

Sir Raven said, "So you left a little girl alone in a dark forest. Do you know how stupid that is?"

Bro shrugged. "What's the worse than can possibly happen? Aisha knows magic, it's not like she would go missing or anything just because we left her alone for 1 minute not even fifty feet away."

Big Sis Aisha was missing.

I looked over at Bro, but he instead of looking distressed, he looked bored and annoyed. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Truth be told, at the time, I couldn't think of anything to say!

As it turns out, all the others couldn't say anything either, but not due to a lack of thought, and I guessed it had something to do with the darkness. Bro looked at me and shrugged. He just kept on walking in one direction, and I thought: _Aisha's on her own now! _Man, I didn't want to leave her like that, but we had no choice. In a forest this big and dangerous, surely, we wouldn't be able to find her...

I realized that Freitunier and Destroyer didn't respond, and I thought of this as odd. Usually, they would respond with words of advice, but not this time. I looked at my gloves, and the blue parts were slowly turning purple. I was running out of time. What good I would do to the rest of the world if I was evil?

I ran past Bro without looking back. I could hear all of their voices... all my friends and elders that died, along with Big Sis's in my head right then and now. It was infuriating and sad! They made me think of myself as a useless failure, because I was... I wasn't strong enough, and look at what happened.

I jumped off a small cliff on top of an Ent that didn't even notice I was there. _You've always been weak Chung. You can't stop the darkness from taking away your family. But rest assured, they're all here, with the darkness. Now come along and die with us!_ Those voices were getting stronger, and I was tempted to join them. However, dying wasn't really part of my plans, so I promptly stuck out the hand towards it.

"No thanks," I said out loud. I didn't think anything of how I managed to say that at the time, because it's obviously not all THAT important, right? "In fact, I'm feelin' HOT HOT HOT! I won't stop, for you see, this is what you need!" By this point, many more ents took notice of me and were advancing towards me. It really was a scary feeling.

_Do you see this Prince Seiker? This is the darkness in its weakest form! If you think this is scary! HA! Too black, too strong._

No, I couldn't let fear take over me now. I looked all the ents in the eye before they all were released. Sure enough, as soon as I looked every one of them in the eye, all of them went down in arrows and sword slashes and electricity everywhere. Oh, those guys. I forgot about them too.

I looked at Bro who was smirking and said to him, "Took you long enough."

He looked at me like I was crazy.

I continued, "I was having a super serious emo moment, you know, the kind that happens when you feel like you're completely useless and you'll never live up to anyone's expectations?"

He pondered it for a second, then gazed at me in the eyes, and I understood for once. We were more alike than I knew.

He smirked and gave me a thumbs up.

Miss Eve threw an electronball at us, and I looked at her like she was crazy. She pointed in a direction, and would you look at that? A really big ent. It looked threatening, and it would surely take more than a couple sword slashes to bring it down. Luckily for us, I found out what was wrong in my life, and I walked straight up to it and looked it in the eye. My sheer awesomeness stunned the Ent and it fell shortly after. I felt so proud, but for some reason my companions were giving funny faces at me. I knew that wasn't the case as I was too awesome, thank you very much. But still, I wouldn't have learned if it wasn't for one person: Bro.

**Today's Journal Entry: Elsword is crazy.**

I remembered Big Sis, and looked down for a moment, but I looked back up. I wouldn't let that get in my way! My existence will bring them back! All of them! Aisha, Dad, all the people that died for Hamel, all of them!

* * *

"Holy crap, Freitunier!"

"Hmm?"

"When did Chung become so crazy?"

"Because darkness."

"Yeah, yeah."

"He's extremely vulnerable to the darkness; why wouldn't you expect this kind of reaction from him?"

"Well, um. Idk."

"Damnit, why are you such an idiot."

"Because I was made to blow stuff up! Not think about philosophical crap!"

"Yet your existence is a philosophical question in itself."

"I'd kill you if you weren't me."

"I know you would."

* * *

**A/N: 2/3 of the way into this chapter, I realized this story wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. It was starting to get super srs without much humor, so I changed my style of writing for the last third of this. In other words, I completely rushed that part, but for the sake of diversity, it's k in my eyes. Also, needs moar critiques and the such so that crap doesn't happen again.**


	6. Kira-Kira

"Genius magician girl Aisha doesn't fall. She merely... wait."

* * *

Once upon a time, I used to be one of the greatest mages in all of Elrios! But, now that's gone and over with and... well, sigh. Do you know how frustrating it is to have to go through all the crap to learn all about magic again? It infuriates me, because magic is one of the most difficult professions to pick up!

If you don't know my story, it goes something like this: there was a coll ring that I found with my grandfather, but it was cursed and took away all my magic powers. I searched all over Elrios to re learn what I lost, but it's really difficult work.

**Today's lesson: Bill. Bill. Chung hates Bill.**

Ghosts.

Ghosts are scary, okay? They're little scumbags that come out, and when you least expect it, they take over your body or something. In this case, they take my body over to another place. While I'm still paralyzed, they drag me over to a clearing in the forest.

I heard a creepy clown voice say, "Haha! The plan went off without a hitch. This should prove a worthy sacrifice to the demons, don't you think?"

I heard a noticeably younger and saner voice say, "What if they don't like this sacrifice?"

"Then we're pretty screwed then, aren't we?"

I grunted and propped myself up. I looked down and I was tied up in poorly tied rope.

"Hey, she's conscious!"

"Didn't I tell you to make sure she was unconscious?"

"...No..."

My vision was still a little hazy, but I could make out shapes. The biggest one in the group was floating and had a smiley face mask on. Smaller ones looked like they were following the big one. The small ones were floating too, and they also had wizard outfits on. I was kidnapped by a bunch of clowns.

The biggest one looked at me, and he looked down in pensive thought. I heard him mumble something about knocking me out or not. He talks to himself too. Instead of doing something irrational, he looked into my soul and said, "My name is Kira-Kira. You better memorize it, girl, because it's the last one you'll learn before you die!"

I raise one eyebrow questionably and say in a bratty tone, "Oh really?"

"I mean it. You're being sacrificed to the demons so they leave this world alone."

"Oh really?"

"You don't understand! I'm part of a cult that's been to and from the darkness. The things we saw, they're unimaginable! I can't believe the things I saw and I have to protect this world from them!"

"Oh really?"

"You're not taking me very seriously, are you?"

"And you look like a clown."

"Me? The AMAZING Kira-Kira look like a clown! Blasphemy!"

The reason I'm talking like a brat is because, somewhere deep down, I know he can't hurt me. I don't know what the feeling is, but I feel like I'm just so important to some plot, that I simply can't be harmed.

* * *

This girl! How dare she talk to Kira-Kira like that. I will show her to take the end of the world seriously!

"Girl, I hope you know that you're going to be really important."

The brat smirked. "I know that," she said. "Hey clowny," she continued on. "Can I call you Clown-face from now on?" she asked in that innocent tone of a little girl, but her smirk said otherwise.

"Brat," I snarled. "I am going to end you right here if you call Kira-Kira Clownface."

"But you look just like one!"

Wizard #8 whispered to the group behind me, "He kind of does like a Clownface."

I snapped my head back. "I heard that you fools! Wizard 8! To the dungeon with you!"

"We don't even have a dungeon!"

"And a **** you too!"

I turned back to the girl. "Now where was I?"

She raised her eyebrow and asked me, "What's that?"

I didn't know what she was talking about. "What's what?"

"That thing. On your neck."

I felt my neck and felt something squishy. I looked down to the best I could (it's hard to look down with this gigantic helmet!) and saw nothing, but my hands told me otherwise. I looked at my fingers and saw it. I yelled, "SPIDER!"

My wizards snickered. Scumbags. The girl merely said, "Not that, the necklace!"

Oh yeah, that pendant. I got this pendant back when I was but a little boy wanting to learn magic. I wasn't skilled with magic, like, at all; I could only master the basic elements. One thing I found out though, is that I could combine basic magic with normal science and provide spectacular results. I found this pendant on the ground somewhere, and it actually boosted up my strength!

I replied to her, "This thing is a magic pendant given to me by the great council. They have entrusted me with this pendant to boost my strength so I could defend the world against evil. Why do you ask?"

"Because..." and mumbled something inaudible.

I leaned in closer and asked her, "What's that?"

She smiled. She said, "That's what."

* * *

Call it cheesy, but when you can manipulate a joke like that to match a life-threatening situation, you have to feel proud of yourself. I busted myself out of my rope prison and punched Kira-Kira in the face. He stumbled back a little, then took out a wand and pointed it at me.

He shouted, "GET HER!" in a really funny clown voice.

I smiled. Man, that voice never got old. Granted, I only knew him for about half a minute, but who cares?

I stood back and readied my hands with fireballs. A wizard threw a rock at me and I dodged it with ease. Two other wizards flanked around and were preparing to cast what appeared to be a lightning spell. I moved out of the way and in the place I was just standing, there was now fire. If that thing wasn't kept in check, the whole forest would burn down.

I threw two fireballs at the two wizards. One of them caught on fire, and the other quickly dodged it. Behind him was an explosion, and flames. Well, I certainly didn't expect that to happen. I don't want to set the forest on fire, but I had no other choice but to use my fireballs. I had no wand to use... unless...

I looked at Kira-Kira. He was standing in the back chanting incantations to himself with his wand in the open. I saw a fireball coming straight towards me, but I knew how to redirect it. Being a first-rate magician meant you learned a lot of neat stuff, and this, was in fact a neat trick. I stuck my hand out and caught the flame and threw it back pitcher style towards Kira-Kira.

Kira-Kira looked up just a bit too late, and I teleported over to him and gave him a swift punch to the chin. He was sent flying to the moon and came down. He made a huge crater. The other magicians were nonexistent now. They probably ran off because they couldn't handle this little girl. Now it was just me and him.

I stepped onto his chest and grabbed his pendant. I said to him, "Nice pendant, I'll keep it." Smiling, I winked him off.

* * *

Soon after that, I managed to make my way out of the forest. I saw it go down in flames and I remembered Kira-Kira. Okay, maybe that's why all the magicians fled now, but at least now there isn't a spooky forest blocking the way from Ruben to Elder now!

Whistling, I found my way to the road to Elder. I could see it in the distance; it was probably a thirty minute walk away.

I was really tired, and stretched my mouth out to yawn. I kept up a fast pace, and I saw five small figures in the distance. I wanted company, so I broke into a run. I ran for about two minutes before I got tired (no, I'm not nonathletic. I just sprinted all the way.) and I could make out details now. Red hair, giant cannon, oddly shaped arm, ridiculous bust size. Those were my friends. I ran faster and ignored the pain in my chest. I shouted out, "Guys, it's me! Wait up!"

After shouting that twice, one of them noticed me. Rena tugged on Elsword and pointed back. Now they could all see me running in the distance, and they started walking back.

When I finally got to the group, I collapsed on the ground gasping for air. Jerk Elsword looked over me and said, "You okay?"

Chung replied, "Does she look okay to you?"

"To you?"

"She looks fine."

Elsword looked back and said, "Hey Aisha, think you can fix Chung for us? He's gone batty."

I scowled and coughed a little. I whispered, "Asthma," to nobody.

Elsword scratched his ear. "Huh? Ass-mar? Well sucks to your ass-mar."

Rena and Eve kneeled down beside me. Eve examined the inside of my mouth and Rena gave me some fruit to eat. She said to me, "We were so worried about you! We thought you were still in that awful forest fire."

The fire that I helped to spread. I looked up and saw the forest. Indeed, the purple was now a sharp shade of orange and the sky was now gray. I took the fruit and ignored the forest. "Thanks."

Eve helped me up and Raven had gone on ahead to Elder. Elsword was with Chung in a one-sided conversation.

"And you should have seen it. The Ent burst into flames like that!"

"Yeah. You already told me that." Elsword looked at me and asked me a favor. "Hey Aisha, can you get rid of this? Chung's been acting pretty crazy ever since we got separated back in the forest."

I facepalmed. "Fine."

**Today's lesson: Bill. Bill. Chung hates Bill.**

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"Bill."

"STOP SAYING BILL!"

"I heard you like chickens."

"Nah, that ain't a chicken."

"I'm pretty sure that was a chicken."

"It wasn't a chicken!"

"I know a chicken when I see one, and that wasn't a chicken."

"Confirmed. Not a chicken."

Chung looked away. "It was a chicken..."

HORSE.

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

"Horse."

* * *

**For those of you who have no clue what the hell that last part was about, I don't know either.**

**But watch these anyways (go to youtube and paste these at the end of the URL): /watch?v=p1rgrDcPtBQ**

** /**watch?v=7pdAhFhPtu8

** /**watch?v=WEtf3XolX9w


	7. Speka

"Embrace the darkness!"

* * *

I stared at the little red squirrels eating the trees in front of me. I heard the clown to the side of me scream my name. I watched this light display and shouted to nobody in particular, "What the f-"

"Speka, help me!"

**Today's lesson: Wherever I go, everything dies.**

I joined Kira-Kira's tribe of dark magicians to learn more about dark magic. Ever since I was a little girl, those tales of magicians who could create storms and split entire oceans apart. I tried to join a magic school here in Elder, but this place is pretty run-down. It's ruled by a tyrant and the school system in this city sucks.

"The pain!"

I once found a book in the school library that covered just a few basics of dark magic. While not illegal, people often associate the darkness with evil, and with good cause.

"There's a bucket of water right there; do you think you could get that for me, girl?"

I was orphaned at a young age. We were originally from Feita, you see. Feita's home to some crazy shi-

"Damnit Speka, are you deaf!?"

Screw this. I'm gonna take this scroll, and stick it straight up his ass! And so I did.

"Screw off, clown."

"WHAT THE-"

Where was I? Oh right, Feita. Feita's right next to Velder, one of the places on this blasted continent with good weather, and Bethma, one of the places on this continent that's completely bare, save a few dinosaur bones. Feita's a border-town, I guess you could call it. There's a tower in the middle of it that only the really religious people go to, but one day-

"I'm still on fire here. Nice job with the scroll though. You really stuck it somewhere safe."

there was an earthquake. Earthquakes are common in Feita, so my family just shrugged it off; however, the soldiers didn't go to the tower straight away, which I thought was odd. The town guardians usually go to the tower after an earthquake, god forbids anybody know the reason. But I know the reason. When there's an earthquake, demons come out. Sure, I was what, 4 at the time? But I'm not making up a story here. The soldiers must have been tired after something and the demons invaded our poor little town. My mom was killed, and my dad barely had enough time to take me away from the place to go to relatively safe, but way hotter, Bethma.

Damn, I hated Bethma. The weather's hot, the town seems rugged like all hell, and the community. Damn the community too. They're so mean; all they ever talk about are cows, cows, and cows! My dad became drunk on a regular basis and started to leave me home for days on end.

"I think I'm dying now."

"Good. Stop interrupting my story." Ah, there's a rock. Let's aim this carefully and- "Hyah!"

"Wait what are you doing?"

The boulder struck him square in the side and he was sent flying through the crimson forest.

Anyways, it got to the point where the town had to take me away from my father, and when that happened, I took up an interest in magic to keep myself from growing bored. Unfortunately for me, I was pretty bad at magic. I learned how to shoot out fireballs and that's it. What I found out from a travelling group however, is that dark magic is super easy! My first spell within the darkness tree of magic was some void thing that sucked everything in. It took up almost no energy on my part, and the results were extremely satisfying.

Bethma grew a bit paranoid of me though and sent me away to nearby Elder, where I could learn even more about dark magic! But it being ruled by a tyrant and all... yeah, the school system here sucks.

"This is quite hot."

"Shut up. I'm still telling my story!"

I had to learn my magic from other means. I tried the library. I found a couple books about magic in there, but they were almost all useless.

One day, a festival was held in Elder. There was a circus act, and the clowns performing there used magic to do their tricks. To the normal eye, it must have seemed quite strange, but normal, for a clown to pull off stunts like those, like pulling huge objects out of their ears, or balancing on top of a tightrope. That was on fire. But I knew better. I knew that the only way they could take out those objects with ease was with dark magic.

After the show was over, I went and spied on their little camp. What do you know? They really were using dark magic. I walked straight up to what seemed to be their leader and demanded entry. And that's how I came-

"Are you done telling your story yet? Can you help me now?"

I looked past the boulder I threw at Kira-Kira and shouted, "I just made an active-effort to kill you! Why would you think that I would want to help you?"

"Because then I'd haunt you forever and ever!"

"I've seen worse than a creepy clown make ghost threats at me." I pulled out a compass to find north. I looked north-eastish to find the direction I should go to get to Elder village and without looking back, I said ,"See ya later, clown."

* * *

I was walking through the streets of Elder as normal, and watched with a wicked smile as people made an active effort to avoid me. Such is the life of a dark magician, but I didn't mind. I kind of liked the seclusion from society. Peace and quiet is the way to go, let me tell you that! Heehee! Ah, but this life is quite boring. The most interesting thing to have happened to me this past year was definitely that forest fire...

Ooof!

Oh damnit! I must have been so busy daydreaming I didn't even notice there were people not trying to avoid me! Wait, not trying to avoid me? I looked up and saw a bumped into a strange looking girl with abnormally white hair. Probably an albino.

And she turned around, and what do you know? She's not albino. You see, albino's have red eyes (I think), but this one doesn't. What's up with that? Oh, I almost forgot my manners.

I said to the girl, "Sorry about that miss. I guess I wasn't paying attention."

She said back to me in an odd diction that said she didn't know how to effectively communicate, "Oh, that's okay. "

I looked past her and noticed a purple-haired girl looking at me weirdly. She looked familiar... oh wait, she's the one who burned down the forest.

I tried to confirm this by saying, "So, did you see that forest fire in the shadow forest? It's the talk of the town now."

The girl uneasily said, "Uh, yeah. Not every day you see an... a forest fire. They're pretty bad, aren't they?"

The white haired girl nodded.

I remembered that they weren't avoiding me and I asked the two, "You girls aren't from around here, are you?"

The purple haired girl said, "Just visiting. Here on some... magician stuff."

I nodded, but without purpose. "Uh yeah. You're a magician too? I'm a dark magician here, and people here know that, so they usually try to get away as fast as they can."

The white haired girl said, "So that is how you knew we were not from this village."

The girl held out her hand and with an confused expression said, "My name's Aisha?"

Something about this seems rushed, liked it was forced to happen, albeit too quickly. Nonetheless, I took her hand and shook it. "Speka. Pleased to meet you!"

Aisha pointed to the other girl, "And she's Eve."

I said to Aisha, "She looks different. Like, not the different that separates you from me, but completely separate from us..."

Eve said, " Do not worry about it for now. I am just... not from around here. Far away, in fact."

"..."

"... Long... story?"

"Yeah, like really long."

"..."

"..."

I looked around at the empty space surrounding us three girls. I pretended I had a watch and looked down at my forehand. "Oh, will you look at the time? I've got to go! Ha ha ha ha..."

Aisha smiled awkwardly and spoke with uncertainty. "If you'd like, you can, um, stay with us if you're not wanted here and have nothing to do here?"

I raised an eyebrow. I said to her, "How do you know I have nothing to do here?"

"You told me. Right now."

"..."

Aisha turned to Eve and said, "Well, I got something out of her! That's got to count for something right?"

"I told you how to do that," the silver one replied.

Something clicked in my head and I said to them, "Wait, you're inviting me, a dark magician, to come with a group of strangers that I don't even know?"

Eve said, "Yes."

Aisha added to her, "We're all really strong. If you get out of hand, we can easily put you down!"

I lowered my hat over my eyes and smirked. "You don't have any idea what I'm capable of."

Eve said, "Your body is that of a 16 year-old."

"Age doesn't mean anything."

Aisha jumped up a bit when I said that. She turned away and started walking away.

"Hey, what's with her?"

Eve motioned for me to follow her. Without thinking, I did.

**Today's lesson: Wherever I go, everything dies.**

Only matter of time before I manage to kill something with these guys. Either purposely, or by accident.


	8. Banthus

"You are so bad at math, I can not even."

* * *

**Today's lesson: The unintelligent can not be reasoned with.**

Eve was walking besides Speka while following Aisha. Eve turned to Speka and told her, "Aisha has been a complex subject to talk about. You see, she was one of the most powerful magicians in the world by the time she was twelve. To have all that power stored up inside of her at such a young age, Eve is most perplexed about how she could have stored it all in without breaking down mentally or emotionally. She went on an expedition with her grand father to some ruins, and there she found a ring. She must have thought that that ring was just a normal ring, but it sucked out all of her magic and disappeared, and now she has to relearn magic all over again. Knowing that you are in a state of power, only to have it taken away from you, Eve knows that feeling all too well."

Speka was looking ahead towards Aisha. She nodded to signify she understood. "Yeah," she said. "I know what you mean, perfectly, I guess." Eve nodded back.

The three were walking towards their temporary residence in the village of Elder: a slightly worn down shapeless white and gold house, and average in size. The coloring of the house would have made it look extravagant, but the surrounding city dulled it down to a plain old building.

Aisha in the lead took out a key and inserted it into the keyhole. Twisting it, she unlocked the door and opened it with a creaking sound. Inside, she shouted, "We're back guys!"

Elsword looked over the couch and said in a toneless voice, "Great. Do you have any leads on where Banthus is?"

Aisha answered, "Yes. Yes we do." She motioned Eve to come over and told Elsword, "Eve will tell you all about it."

Eve bought up her console and looked for a file within it. When she found it, she read, "Hoffman reports that Banthus has hidden in a cave, code nammed: Banthus Cave, to the east of the castle, plainly visible by road."

Elsword looked over the couch and asked Eve, "What do you mean plainly visible by road?"

Eve answered, "When we were travelling to this place, there was a cave in plain sight during one of the extreme turns."

Elsword looked aggravated and said, "What the hell? Is Banthus that dull to hide in plain sight! Maybe we were looking too hard... No. There wasn't a cave back there. I'm fairly sure I would have noticed it."

Aisha said, "Elsword, we have a carefully recorded map, and there is a cave by the road."

Elsword got up and walked over towards Aisha and said, "Really then? Show me."

Eve then gathered the rest of the El Search Party together and headed towards the spot in the road that allowed the Banthus Cave to be visible. Looking in, the cave seemed to draped with wealth.

"Wait, there is a cave here? I swear it wasn't here before!" Elsword whispered to himself. He caught Eve glancing at him and commented on the gold shining towards them from the cave. "Probably stolen," Elsword remarked.

Raven said, "Hey, when did this girl get here?" Eve looked towards Raven and saw him pointing towards Speka.

Elsword jumped back and pulled out his sword. He said to Speka, "What the- Who are you and what do you want?"

Aisha said, "She's been here the whole time. She was there when we were briefing you about this cave."

Elsword replied, "But I didn't notice her!"

Eve said to Elsword, "How does one tunnel vision so much that they can't notice the company of another sentient being?"

Rena said in a scolding voice, "Tunnel vision does that to a person sometimes."

Speka said, "Look, I'm just here to help if you want. No need to get so... touchy? That's not the word."

Raven continued to glare at Speka and Elsword did the same for a few seconds before brightening up and smiling. He said to her, "Sure, why not? We could always use the extra help!"

Eve did not expect that kind of response from the boy.

Speka suddenly said, "Hey, where's the kid with the giant-thing?"

Eve looked around. She remarked, "Missing. Probably went to investigate the cave."

Elsword said, "Come on then! What are we waiting for? Beating up a bandit can't possibly be THAT hard!"

Aisha smiled awkwardly and said to him, "You'd be surprised..."

Continuing on into the cave, the party heard a yell that clearly belonged to Chung. Rushing over there, we expected to see him in some kind of battle. Instead, he was playing around in the gold. Eve asked him, "What are you doing?"

Chung laughed and replied, "I'm literally swimming in gold right now! I know that these bandits are bad for stealing, but you've got to give them some props for at least managing to steal this much stuff!" He laughed again. "What if we kept all of this gold when we're done here?"

Raven scoffed. He said to the boy, "Then we'd be no better than the bandits."

Aisha said, "Stealing from stealers is still considered cheating."

Chung's 'hair ears' fell down a bit as he said, "Oh."

Elsword scolded him with a face that couldn't tell if it wanted to smile or not, "That's bad and you should feel bad. I'm dissapointed in you, bro." Elsword looked off towards the ceiling, probably daydreaming. Eve shoved him a bit and they continued walking through.

Chung got up, grabbed his cannon, and he blasted his way up to the ledge that his friends were waiting. He said, "Well, it was just theory-crafting anyways." He smiled and then looked at Speka. He asked, "Hey, who's this?"

Speka introduced herself. "My name's Speka. Pleased to meet you. I'm a dark magician of sorts."

When Speka said that, Elsword, Raven, and Chung tensed up. Chung said, "Dark, as in the power found in Dark El?"

Speka said, "No no no no no. Dark as in the Dark variant of the normal El shard."

Chung said, "Oh. Good. I have bad experiences with the dark El."

Speka tilted her head and said, "Huh?"

Rena smiled. She said, "It's a funny story. I'll tell you when we get back, okay?"

Speka asked, "Do I want to know?"

Chung answered simply, "No."

Eve spoke up quietly, as to not disturb their conversation too much. "Eve thinks we should be going now. Inactivity will cause you to lose muscle mass, in case you did not know."

With Elsword leading the way, the group walked deeper into the cave. It had a lot of sunlight, as the cave opened up to the outside with a clear waterfall flowing down a big chasm.

"It's beautiful," Aisha said. "I can see why this would be a good hiding spot."

Elsword looked back and smirked a bit. He said, "And then that awkward moment when you realize that the really big hole isn't exactly inconspicuous, is it?"

"Oh look at you, using a word bigger than three syllables!"

"Shut up."

Eve said to the two, "We have got more business to take care of!" and pointed towards a newcomer.

Elsword said, "Yeah, yeah. I get it. I'm sorry, Eve."

Aisha shouted out, "Oh, apologize easily to her, but struggle to even thank me!?"

Elsword closed his eyes and turned around to Aisha and stuck his tongue out. Turning back, he opened one of his eyes and yelped in shock. "What the hell?" he said.

Elsword was pointing towards a gigantic bat, easily the size of two humans, maybe Ignis and Leviathan stacked on top of another. The bat grinned and bared its teeth, then sung aloud, "Will you look at you? Puny humans walking into my den! You woke me from my slumber, and now you're gonna ten!"

Rena put her finger on her chin and asked the bat, "What exactly, does that mean, sir bat? I'm pretty sure that's not ten's not in the right context, and you just used it for the sake of rhyming!"

The bat said, "I am the Bat King, my dear wood elf. I would put your head on my shelf, but I'm in dire need of food!"

Speka raised one hand towards her mouth to block sound from reaching the Bat King and she said to the group, "Can we get this over with? The poor animal can't sing!"

Following that statement, two explosions shook the cave. One flashed red, the other blinded blue. When Eve opened her eyes, she saw the Bat King flying into the chasm. She heard the animal screaming.

The group looked towards Raven who was walking away. Seeing as glaring at him wouldn't do anything, they turned to Chung. He put his hands up and said in defense, "What? It's not like I hurt him or anything! I mean, bats can fly right?"

From the hole, Eve heard the Bat King say, "Did I mention I can't fly? There's a reason I'm so big, and it's because I'm actually overweight!"

Tilting her head toward Chung again, he said, "Uh, I'm sure he'll be fine! Perfectly fine!"

Chung turned around and yelped in surprise and pointed his fingers towards the newcomers. "What the hell?" he said.

A swarm of bats flew past the group and out of the caves, murmuring lines such as, "The King is dead, retreat!" and, "Help us!" and, "I don't want to die!"

From the chasm, Eve overheard the late Bat King say, "I'm not dead you morons! I just can't get up! A little help here?"

Speka leaned over the chasm and shouted down into the pit, "Shut up! I'm trying to think!"

Eve turned and saw Raven conversing with a rather large man in a green shirt and mask covering his whole face. Looking towards us, the man started walking and dragged a club along with him. When he came within a respectable distance, he said, "So, are you guys the pest control we hired?"

Elsword said, "Pest control? Of course no-"

Aisha covered his mouth and quickly explained to the man, "What he meant to say, is that he doesn't consider bats pests. Our definition of pest is usually bugs! Toads too."

The man looked down at the floor for an unreasonably amount of time. Finally, the man looked up and asked the group, "So, I suppose you want your payment."

Eve heard Elsword try to shout, "Of justice!" but it was very muffled by Aisha's hand.

Rena said, "Of course, it IS our job after all." She beamed.

The man started leading us deeper into the cave. The group saw bandits sleeping on large gold piles, playing cards, and more often than not, simply playing with their stolen goods. However, Eve could feel the El coming ever closer. As if on queue, the man said, "We're getting close," so Eve did not have to.

The man led the group to a door and said, "Alright, the boss is right through here. Take care not to piss him off, okay?"

Chung said, "I'll try, Mister. No guarantees though, the red-haired boy can quite an idiot sometimes."

"You too? I'm just misunderstood, damnit!"

Raven pushed the door open with his nasod arm and said to Elsword and Chung, "Come on, let's go."

The door opened into a wider portion of the cave, but with only one set path carved out by humans. At the end of the straight path was a large amount of gold, and Banthus, who was quite large, rummaging through the treasure.

Closing the door silently, Raven spoke up, "Sir, we're the pest control that you guys hired. We would like our payment now, please."

Noticing us, Banthus slowly turned towards us and said, "Pest control? Oh right. So did you get rid of the bat infestation."

Raven nodded and said, "Well, we got rid of what appeared to be their king, and a large amount of bats left after that."

Banthus sat down and crossed his legs. "Ah good. It was annoying hearing that bat sing late at night when everything echoed throughout the cave. Come over here, and we'll discuss your payment, shall we." He looked up and smiled a toothy grin with one eye that stared into Eve's soul and the other that was scratched out and replaced with an X-shaped scar.

The group walked over towards Banthus, but only Chung sat down, on his cannon as well. The group eyed the heaping pile of shine, and Banthus, noticing this told them, "You can take anything you want from that pile, equal to about, eh, say 2,000 ED each. Provided I give permission."

Elsword, being the blunt idiot that he is, said immediately, "I'll take that shiny blue thing," and pointed to Ruben's El.

"No," the bandit said.

Elsword murmured, "Well, it would have been funny if it worked that way anyways."

Rena said to us, "Huddle together everyone, group discussion time!"

Forming a circle, Elsword spoke out first. He said, "When are we gonna kick Banthus's butt? He's right there."

Raven said, "Very soon. We just have to be careful. We choose our prizes, then when we're about to leave, we get him."

They nodded and went about selecting their loot. Eve tried to eye anything useful, but she couldn't. She looked at the others. Rena and Raven seemed more keen on watching Banthus than anything else, but Aisha, Chung, and Elsword were actively trying to find something worthwhile. Soon, Aisha gave up, but Elsword found a sword scabbard and picked it up. Chung was choosing for everybody else, a.k.a. grabbing everything he could and stuffing it into his Destroyer. When it was full, he said, "Alright, I'm done. Hopefully this isn't too hard to carry." Using two hands, he lifted the beast onto his shoulders and stumbled back a bit, but regained his footing.

Banthus looked inside the cannon (because that is very smart to look inside a weapon) and then at the scabbard that Elsword picked and said, "Eh, I guess that would do. Now, our business is done here, you can leave now."

Raven nodded. "Agreed." He nodded towards Chung then glanced at Banthus than back to Chung. Something went off inside his head, and he started walking towards Banthus. Meanwhile, Elsword was walking back towards the pile and waited. When Chung got to Banthus, he swung his cannon filled with gold, and it sounded like it hurt.

Banthus definitely did not see this coming and Elsword picked up Ruben's El.

* * *

_When he did, a bright light shot out of the crystal and filled the land. Then, the world was sundered into light, darkness, air, fire, water, and earth._


	9. Dimensions

"Then, the world was sundered into light, darkness, air, fire, water, and earth._"_

* * *

"Choosing the nasod, I see?"

"And what do you want?"

"You know what I want, Solace. It's only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down, and you or I won't be able to stop it."

"..."

"Look, I don't know what we're trying to accomplish here, but doesn't it seem backwards to split the warriors up? How are we supposed to fight the Dark El if we don't have any unity?"

"Because we need individual strength too!"

"We need to stick together, Solace. Nobody here can understand that, arrogant pricks that they are. Come on. We don't need to do this."

"You seem to be missing one crucial piece of information."

"Oh, and what would that be, Mr. All Powerful?"

"The beginning was a joke to begin with."

"What do you mean?"

"You really need to get more invested in the stuff that we do if you really don't know. The six aren't supposed to be six. Right now, there's only supposed to be three. Glave thought it would be funny to screw around a bit with time and space a bit and pull off a joke on us."

"Well the way the story's presenting itself now, it isn't very funny."

"That's subjective, but I agree."

"Anyway, we successfully screwed over the world by this point. What now?"

"Ebalon. This is our world. We do what we want with it. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna give my warrior her dream come true."

"It's a trick, isn't it?"

"Well, kind of."

"And what, pray tell, do you mean?"

"Well, I'm giving her the nasod race back and flourishing better than ever, but I'm gonna have to find a way to slowly tear it down and force Eve to make some quick decisions to, you know, strengthen her. Or something."

"Well then, I guess I'm just going to choose her friend then."

"The brat?"

"No, the other brat."

"Oh, him?"

"Yes, that's the one Solace. Good job on figuring it out. Just watch, he's going to become the best leader you've ever seen, and he'll unite everybody down there on that pathetic cause, regardless of opinions and race. He's going to be trusted by all, because he would tell the truth, and the whole truth, all the time. More than can be said for you."

"Look, I've been sorry for it, ever since I did... well, it."

"If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have to resort to this in the first place!"

"..."

"Enjoy your sci-fi dreams come true, Solace."

"At least I have a dream; ironic, considering the fact that you embody the moon."

"...Shut up."

"..."


End file.
